S1E22 - Resident Evil 4 (Part 2)

Welcome back to another episode of Disk Read Error, the podcast where every week we dive into the extensive and fascinating library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the PlayStation Two. I'm Derek Kicker.

I'm Ian Golding. Part two.

Part part two. Part two. And this is Resident Evil Four. Part Two. Electric Boogaloo. Insert music here because Ian doesn't have a comment.

No, my dog just farted in its fucking vial and then started like, wheezing. Are you okay, buddy?

He caught himself off guard. What a pleasant surprise. But I'm afraid it's Ashley we need. Not you, Mr. Kennedy.

If you don't need me, then get off my back, old man.

So we are back for part two of Resident Evil Four. The game so big, it necessitated two episodes.

Yeah.

And this episode, we are talking about the gameplay.

Yes.

So let's get into it.

So it seems you killed Krauser, too. How shall I return my appreciation? What are you talking about? I thought he was with you. What are you talking about? Did you really think I trust an American?

So all the Resident Evil games up until this point have followed a pretty strict formula. Pre rendered backgrounds, tank controls, and usually take place in a somewhat small setting.

And you go room to room, and.

Each room is yeah, this game basically kind of does away with that and gives you a more action oriented, faster type of gameplay and is much bigger than previous res Neville games.

Absolutely.

Now, if you're sitting there thinking, oh, no, what about Code Veronica? That game was pretty big. It's actually not. You just think it is because you did so much running back and forth. It's actually not that big.

Damn. Calling them out.

It is not. This game, on the other hand, is pretty big dough. And it feels like a Resident Evil game now because I think it's like, kind of everyone's had the chance to sit with it for so long.

Right.

But it did not feel particularly Resident Evil e when it first came out. I don't think so. It was like a big by the time you get to the end of it, it feels you feel it, but right off the bat, it feels so different.

Yeah.

So different. And part of that comes from the things that went away from previous games. There is typewriters in this game, you do not need ink ribbons to save your game.

No.

Which is fucking you can save as many times as you want, which takes away a bit of the item management of this game. You don't have to carry ink ribbons. You don't have to save ink ribbons. There's also no longer an item box.

Oh, that's right.

Items are gone. You now have a new inventory system, an attache case that you can upgrade at the Merchant, of course. And you basically play a game of Tetris, trying to keep all your shit in this box. And if you run out of space, well, you better drop some shit or.

Just use it for no reason.

Yes. And there is plenty to pick up in this game.

Oh, yes.

Now, you have your standard Resident Evil fare. You have your green herbs, you have your red herbs. Gone are the blue herbs, because I don't believe you can get poisoned in this game.

No, I don't think you can, because the snakes just do damage.

Yeah, they just hurt you. But there is a new herb. There is the yellow herb.

Yes.

And what the yellow herb does is when combined with another herb, it increases your maximum health.

Yes. Which is fucking incredible.

Which is awesome. It gives you a sense of being better at the game than you probably are just because you find yourself healing less. Which is a clever little trick.

Absolutely. Yeah.

But that's not all. There are also other health items. You can pick up fish and you can eat the fish, and the fish will heal you.

Don't forget eggs.

Yeah, eggs. There are eggs all over this game.

Yes.

So many eggs in this game. And you get them you shoot a chicken, they'll drop an egg.

Yeah. Sometimes you kill a snake, they'll drop an egg because they ate the egg. Second egg there, right on your head.

There's also golden eggs, which you can use to heal you, but might be better sell those to a merchant, of course, because you can also pick up random treasures. And those treasures can be combined to make super uber treasures, to make dope ass treasures. And you can sell those to the merchant for more, which is pretty cool.

It's very fucking cool.

And speaking of things dropping, that's new to the Resident Evil world in general is no longer items, strictly just found. Enemies drop items when they die, which is awesome. So you're like, Fuck, I'm out of ammo.

What do I do?

Knife this ganado down? He'll probably drop some ammo.

He will, because I was reading about it and I forgot the name for it.

It's called dynamic item drop rate.

Okay. Yeah. It drops what you need.

Yes. Which is sick.

It's fucking sick. Yeah.

It gives the game sort of a variable difficulty level because you can only kind of choose, I think, between hard or normal.

Yeah, there's no easy but you unlock.

Professional mode after beating the game once, which is much harder. I'm probably going to butcher this, but I believe how the difficulty system of the game works, how the dynamic difficulty system works is depending on how many health items you've used and how much ammo you've gone through and how much damage you've taken the game will, you can have a difficulty rating of, like, one to five. So if you get to a checkpoint and you have made and you haven't used any health items, you haven't taken any damage, and you've barely used any ammo. The difficulty goes up, it spikes, which affects enemy AI, which affects I don't think it affects the amount of enemies because I think the amount of enemies is still thick set. Yeah, but I think it changes their aggression. I think it can change how much damage they do. So that's kind of a cool little thing that challenges you if you're doing well and helps you out if you suck. If you need to get good, get good.

Motherfuckers.

And speaking of checkpoints, this game has chapters. Yes, which was something that wasn't in the previous Resident Evil games. There's no fucking chapters. But this game does have 16 chapters. And at the chapter point, you can save, which is cool, which is a great way to like if you're in between.

Typewriters.

But it's also cool because you can save every chapter on its own. So if you want to just replay one little part, if you want to go back and see maybe try something different in a chapter, it makes it pretty easy to do that. Yeah, I think this game took off really well with the speed running community. And I think that's probably part of it, is that you can really kind of strategize sections of the game by breaking it into chapters.

Like practicing each one a little bit. Yeah.

What else has changed? Well, we've already talked about the insane camera change, the behind the shoulder, you aim. Now you cannot shoot and move. No, this is something that back I don't remember people really complaining about this back then, but it's something that now people say that it hasn't aged well because of that. I disagree. I think it's aged fine. I think it's just a different type of gameplay. Yeah, but you cannot shoot and run and when you aim, you pull up a laser sight. Every gun in this game has a laser sight, which is funny.

Especially the shotguns. Yeah.

And I would say especially with the GameCube version, this game's combat is very intuitive. It feels really good.

Yeah, I agree. I think it feels great.

And one of the cool things, too, is where you shoot an enemy is not only different, they react differently depending on where you shoot them. It's also important, strategy wise, to shoot them in different places. You will find that it's very easy to get overwhelmed by enemies, especially like in some of the village parts in the cabin fight, which is the first major skill check of the game, in the water room, which is the second major skill check of the game. But what you can do, and this is a strategy that is something you should learn really quickly, is that you can shoot enemies in the knees or in the leg, and most of the time they will fall sometimes. And I would say that you could probably work this into being pretty consistent. You can shoot them in the face, whereas a headshot isn't like I mean, it does extra damage, but it's not.

Like you're blowing their heads not quadly every time.

No, but it does stagger them. If you played any of the Souls games or anything you're familiar with staggering an enemy. It will stagger them, which allows you to do something that you've also never been able to do in a Resident Evil game, which is melee an enemy.

By melee, you mean do an awesome spinning roundhouse kick to their face?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. And it is awesome. Leon has a couple of moves. He has a roundhouse kick. I believe he has a punch. And he has a German suplex. If you get behind them.

Yes, if you get behind him. My favorite thing is, early in the game, obviously, I saw moves. Later, the only thing he ever did was kick, and I was just like, so he went to a super karate master. He's like, I just want you to teach me one thing, which is a kick. And I want it to be so good at it that once in a while I can make people's fucking heads explode when I kick them. Because the first time that happened, I squealed with fucking joy.

Now, you can't German suplex until you get to the castle.

Okay? Yeah, that's right.

But the German suplex, you can get lucky if they've taken enough damage and you can suplex them and their head will explode on impact with the ground.

So good.

Which is fucking incredible.

Yeah.

And another thing that this game changes from previous Resident Evil games is that the knife is incredibly useful to people other than knife only runners and people who, like, speedrun the game.

Well, probably, because Leon, if he's the first Resident Evil to figure out that while the pointy thing is good on a knife, the super sharp sides are also very important. Because, like, in the old one, you just kind of stabby, stabby, and now you're slashy, slashy. And that was delightful. Oh, yeah.

Also, what the biggest change with the knife other than the swipey? Swipey is that it is no longer something you have to equip.

Right.

It's always part of always equipped. And you can use it's mapped to a button and you can just pull it out, which is perfect because there's a lot of breakable barrels, crates stuff around, and instead of wasting a bullet on them, you just knife them. And if you play this game quite a bit, like I have, you end up getting into the muscle memory territory of double slashing every box in case there's a fucking snake snake in there.

Yeah.

You get bit by a couple of snakes, you realize that you are going to be double swiping every single box that's fucking or barrel in this game because snakes will just come out and bite you.

Yeah. And they'll get you right away. I don't think I got to that point, but I would react quick enough towards the end.

Yeah, it's a very fun mechanic. The knife is also useful in combat at this point because you can knife enemies and the enemies can stagger from knife hits. So you can swipe, swipe, and that can stagger them and you can do a kick and they fall back and knock other enemies down. So can you get them in a row and stuff? You can really take advantage of it, but yeah. This makes the knife infinitely more useful than it really has ever been. Again, the code Veronica heads out there. I am with you. I understand that code Veronica. That was the only Resident Evil game where the knife did damage based on how many frames it made contact with the enemy and not how many times you swung it. And that that made it like the most op knife ever. I get you, I'm with you. But it's still not as useful as this knife.

No. This knife is incredible.

This knife and then after you defeat Krauser in the first knife fight with him, you get his knife, which does slightly more damage, swings just a touch quicker and looks bad ass.

It's a super badass fucking knife.

It is fucking cool as shit.

Yeah.

And this game varies up the boss mechanics and the enemy mechanics pretty widely. There's a wide amount of strategies for enemy AI. Enemies are very different in previous Resident Evil games. A good example is like Resident Evil Zero. Right? Where you have all the zombies kind of have two mechanics, right? They have like an instant grab and bite. You can kind of bait them into biting to dodge them. These enemies have a much more robust AI. Yes, they are a little more clever. You'll find that aiming at their heads, they'll move, they'll duck, they'll sidestep. They'll also throw axes at you. They'll hit you with pitchforks. They can use weapons and you can shoot the weapons out of the air. If you shoot them in their hands, they can drop the weapon, drop them.

If they're holding dynamite, you can shoot the dynamite in their hand or in the air close to them, explodes and fucking kills them.

Yes. Some of them will light the stick of dynamite and you can shoot them in the leg and they won't be able to have time to throw it and it'll explode their hand and blow everyone up. It's great. There's also just so many enemies. We talked about all the enemies in the village, but in the castle we forgot to talk about Novistadors, the Invisible Bugs, which are the worst fucking enemies.

Not a fan.

They are not so bad. It's something that I am very glad they would kind of fix in the remake by making them not completely invisible and kind of making them more camouflagey.

Okay.

But it's still a pretty unique enemy. Regenerators iron maidens. There's all kinds and not to mention there's like multiple kinds of plagus.

Yeah.

So once it turns nighttime, the plagus can come out because they do not like sunlight. And then you blow off an enemy's head and all of a sudden a parasite will shoot out of it and you basically have to destroy the enemy all over again. And there's a plagueis that has a big scythe on it, swings at you. Yeah. That can cut your head off. There's ones that will just whip at you. There's ones that will eat you that can one shot you. There's ones that will detach. And they're like little spiders.

Right.

And it's all fucked up. And some of these enemies have guns, especially when you get to the island, they'll have guns. They'll have Gatling guns. They'll have rocket launchers in the castle. They have crossbows. They have shields. They have maces. The amount of enemy variation in this game is pretty wild. And each boss encounter, I feel like, is very deliberate and very well thought out.

Oh, 100%.

I think the Mendez fight is great. I think the De Lagos fight is great. I think I love that all the encounters with El Higante is great and something that kind of shines through that is unfortunately no longer kind of a hallmark with Resident Evil games, is you can make decisions that affect the outcome later on in the game. In the very beginning of the game, you find a dog in a bear trap.

Yes.

Now, you can shoot at this dog and the dog will escape the bear trap and run away. Or you can ignore the dog and the dog will stay in the bear trap. Or you can go up to it and you can free the dog. Now, if you free the dog, he'll come back and help you in about, depending on how you play, an hour and a half to 2 hours later, when you fight that first El Higante, he'll come and assist you in that fight.

It's that dog. It's my favorite.

Yeah, it's that dog. It's clearly like a wolf, too.

Yeah. I didn't think it was a dog. That's why I love the line so much, bro. That's a wolf.

I do believe that part of like, a scrapped version of Resinil Four would end up becoming Haunting Ground because that dog model is the same and the main character in Haunting Ground is basically like a reskinned Ashley model.

Oh, wow.

Okay, so that's a fun little fun little trivia there.

Ballistics and all.

Ballistics and all, yeah. Or after the cabin. I think it's after the cabin fight. It might be before the cabin fight. You basically have two paths in which you can go. One path will lead you to an Elhigante fight. One path will lead you to the Bella sisters, which are two chainsaw wielding sisters that are pretty difficult to take down. But again, that's a choice you have. You'll end up getting more reward for killing the sisters. But the higante is an easier fight.

Right after you just had a fight.

That assuredly took a lot of your ammo.

Most, yeah.

The cabin fight is, I would say, the biggest skill check in the game.

Until if you've been stockpiling incendiary grenades, not so bad.

Yeah. If you had an idea was coming or just, for some reason, just stockpiled everything you can get through, it a little easier. But it is a difficult fight.

I was saving them for, I assumed, a boss fight, and then I realized what I was doing wasn't working the way I needed it to. So I was like, These guys, I'm going to back up the stairs and start chucking. And then they started coming through the top, of course, and fucked my whole shit up. But it was a couple of glorious moments. These fuckers were bottlenecking at the bottom of the stairs, and I was like, I'll burn you off of fucking death. I love it.

Yes. It is a fun part of the game that I'm also glad that they kept with the remake. One thing that would be a step down, kind of, I think, from the previous Resident Evil games, is the quality of the puzzles. I don't think there's any really difficult puzzles in this game.

No, there aren't.

All the puzzles are kind of like pretty simple.

Yeah, they just moved this box there's the one where the only one I can think of right now is when we shoot the three boxes at the dam so you can cross where the docks so that there's a box in between. And it was like I think there's.

A few good puzzles in this game. I think that largely, though, I think the puzzle is figuring out how to conquer each room because there's so many enemies.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's the puzzle.

What strategy is going to because there's multiple times in this game where you need Ashley to do something, but you have to protect Ashley, because if Ashley gets taken away, you lose. If Ashley gets hurt, you lose. She has her own health bar, but she dies very quick.

Yeah.

She is very useless. What is it? The water room in the castle, which is another major skill check, is a huge example of that. She has to work these cranks while you basically fight like an insane amount of people.

Fucking insane people with shields.

It is a fucking nightmare. Another way that this game improved, though, upon the previous ones, is it took something that was in Resident Evil Two and in some ways Resident Evil Three and just blew it up, which is upgrading your weapons, which is crucial to this game.

100%.

Yes, crucial. You're going to want to upgrade your pistol. You can upgrade usually power reload speed, critical capacity, ammo capacity, critical shot firing rate. And then every weapon has a unique upgrade from when they're fully upgraded.

Right?

So the final shotgun of the game, when you fully upgrade it, it holds 100 shotgun shells.

Fucking amazing.

Its capacity is. And another thing that was part of the strategy is when you upgrade these games, this is something they removed from the remake that really kind of bummed me out, is when you upgrade your ammo capacity, it refills your gun. So you kind of want to make sure you upgrade animal capacity when you're on an empty magazine because you will get the free ammo. That is not the case in the remake.

That's a shame.

Yeah, it makes something like upgrading that shotgun, which only it's unique upgrade in the new one is only 50 shells. But it makes it almost not worth it because why the fuck would you do that? If you're not going to get the 50 shells? Like, why do it?

Weak sauce.

Super duper weak sauce. There's also attachments. You can do attachments. There are standard attachments similar to previous resonable games. You can get a pistol called the Red Nine, which you can equip a stock to increase the stability of the gun. You can get put scopes on the rifles. Of course, there's like a normal scope, there's a thermal scope, there's a stock for the TMP, which is like a Uzi, basically with a little submachine gun, which I never use in the original. I use it a lot more in the remake.

I used it a lot.

Yeah, there's the Mind Thrower, which is a funny weapon. But one of the things that makes this game great, and this is similar to other Resident Evil games, is once you beat this game, the fun really begins because it has a new game, plus it has professional mode and it has a ton of unlockables. So let's talk about those.

Ada.

So it is true, true about what.

You working with wesker, I see you've been doing your homework.

Why Ada? What's it to you?

Why are you here? Why'd you show up like this?

So we're going to talk about the PlayStation Two version and the GameCube version because they are a little different in this respect. When you beat the GameCube version, you unlock professional mode. You unlock the ability to purchase the infinite rocket launcher from the merchant. And you unlock an alternate costume for Leon, which is his RPD outfit from the second game. And you unlock a scenario called Assignment Ada, which is like a 1 hour long little scenario where you play as Ada. That's for the GameCube version. Now, for the PlayStation Two version, it's a little bit different. You unlock all of that stuff, but you also unlock Assignment or you unlock separate ways, which is basically almost an entire campaign playing as Ada in what she was doing while Leon was doing his shit. Fucking awesome, which is really fucking cool. There's also a new weapon that was PlayStation Two exclusive, which I believe is called the PRL. It's a fucking laser that just blows them up. Now, you can also unlock and it might be from the first play through, I can't remember, but you unlock a Zoot suit for Leon sure. Which is very funny. And you unlock a suit of night armor for Ashley, which is incredible because it means that Ganados can no longer lift her and she cannot take damage.

That's amazing.

So it makes her not be so goddamn useless because she can't be carried away. So you can kind of just ignore her.

Yeah.

Now, through Assignment Ada, you can unlock the Chicago typewriter, which is a Thompson submachine gun. And if you reload that gun with Leon in his Zoo suit, he does a cool animation where he spins his hat and does like, an anime pose, which is funny. And through you also, like previous games, you will unlock Mercenaries Mode, which this is the best version of Mercenaries Mode.

Oh, is it?

You can play as Leon, you can play as Ada, you can play as Wesker, you can play as Krauser, and you can play as Hunk. And they all have different loadouts and different abilities. Krauser being one of the most fun because he has his bow and arrow and he also transforms his arm. And you basically just collect hourglasses to keep your time going, try to keep Combos going. And if you get high enough score with enough characters on enough maps, you will unlock the Hand Cannon, which is the strongest gun in the game. In the original version, not in the remake. It has the same damage as a rocket.

Oh, my God.

But it has unlimited ammo. Yeah, has unlimited ammo. And it's just a magnum, so you don't run the risk of blowing yourself.

Up, of course, if they're too close. Yeah.

So you just, like, bust through the game. Just BOP, BOP, BOP, BOP, BOP.

Wow. Oh.

Another cool thing about Mercenaries is Wesker has a punch, which is super funny because he punches Chris in Code Veronica, and then very famously, Chris would get him back in Resident Evil Five by punching a boulder. And the boulder ends up pushing Wesker into lava.

Beautiful.

Very funny. But that's a lot of I mean, that's for back then. That's a lot. That is so much gameplay.

Yeah.

That is so much to do. To do like a completionist kind of thing and get everything in the game and 100% and beat it on professional mode, which is fucking hard, and get S rankings and s rank all the Mercenaries missions with all the characters. It is a lot of gameplay and you got to respect it.

Yeah, you do.

But that's one of the many reasons why this game has kind of stood the test of time and has, like, such amazing replayability. And that leads us into this game's. Legacy carry the same blood.

Interesting. Anyway, there are more important things than solving riddles, right? Now.

You're right. Hurry and find that church, Leon. So legacy of this game. This game is So, I think, especially if you play this game when it came out, you can feel how this game echoed through the rest of games. You can feel it in games like Gears of War right. Which has a similar camera angle. I mean, kind of like every third person shooter from this point on would kind of do this thing absolutely. That this game just became the default.

Yeah.

And the future Resident Evil games, for better or for worse, would lean more into this. Resident Evil Five being a good example, which the game gets a lot of shit. But I do think it's one of the best couch co op games ever, especially for a survival hoarder thing. And it would lead to Resident Evil Six, which is not a great game, but it is a spectacle for sure. But this game also never kind of fell out of the limelight. This game has been rereleased and ported to fucking virtually every console. There was a mobile version of Resneual Four for the iPhone, which seems insane.

Insane, yeah.

I think this game is on most people's. Most publications like best games of all time, which is weird for a quote unquote survival horror game. But think of the games we wouldn't have without this. I don't think we'd have Gears of War. I don't think we wouldn't have Dead Space.

Oh, I would know for sure. Yeah.

I think we wouldn't have the modern Fallout games.

No. We wouldn't have.

Last of us.

Wow. Yeah.

I don't think that game would really exist in this way. Corey Ballrog said resignal Four was an influence on the God of War series, including God of War Two.

Wow.

And particularly God of War 2018.

Yeah. It's the same. Wow. Yeah.

Uncharted director Bruce Straeley called the resignal Four village sequence the best opening fight in any video game.

I might agree with that. Yeah.

And I mean, you can see it in things like Dead Space. That's where it's easy to see. But I think the fact that it's been remastered by, like, an insane amount, I think that is something that's influenced the industry quite a bit because I think it's made people do other games, remaster other games 100%. And I think it says something about the longevity of this game, that it was ported to so many systems. Because the first HD upscale was for the PlayStation Three and the Xbox 360, which I believe were digital downloads only. I don't know if those ever got physical releases. But then, of course, it was on GameCube. It was on PlayStation Two. There was a mobile version. It would end up being on the Xbox One. It would end up being on the PlayStation Four. There was a new version of it that was ported to the Wii, which would take advantage of motion controls, which is honestly one. Of the best ways to play it.

Yeah.

It's very intuitive with the aim.

Right.

It's been ported to The Switch. I've been playing it on the switch. I think it's great on the switch.

Awesome.

You can play it on basically any there's no excuse to not play this game. It is on everything. It is on PC. You can play it on Mac. You can play it on anything. And I have a hard time thinking of another game that's just been ported this much.

No. Since you started saying all this, I've been trying to think of an equivalent game, and I can't come up with one.

Yeah. People didn't want to let this game go. And then by the time the Ports, the HD Remasters started feeling like long in the tooth, they come out and remake it.

They remake it.

And when they remake it, you know what they do? They do the impossible and make what many people considered like one of the greatest games of all time better.

Wow.

The remake is so good, it improves upon this game in virtually every single way.

Wow.

I mean, it is incredible. I thought the Dead Space remake, I was like, oh, shit, this is cool if this is how we're doing remakes now. Because they did the remake for Last of US, right, the part one. And it's like, oh, we remade it from the ground up. But you play it and you're like.

This looks the same.

This is just a double HD remaster, right?

Exactly. Yeah.

This doesn't feel like you remade the game, but Dead Space comes out and you're like, okay, if this is what remakes are going to be, let's do it. And of course, the Resident Evil Two remake. And this is a franchise that has, like, lived kind of on remakes. The Resident Evil One remake is the greatest survival horror game of all time. The Resident Evil Two remake would have won Game of the Year if it happened to have come out in a different year that Sekiro didn't come out right. The Resident Evil Three remake is fine, but The Resident Evil Four remake? Because here's the thing. Resident Evil Two is my favorite video game of all time, the PlayStation One. The Resident Evil Two remake is very good, but it is so different from the PlayStation One that I kind of have a hard time thinking of them as the same game. It's like a reimagining.

Okay.

Whereas the Resident Evil Four remake is different, but it mainly just feels like an improvement.

Wow.

It mainly just feels like they reworked it and made it better. Just fixed anything that like they and that's not to say it's a perfect game. I don't think there is such thing as a perfect game, but I would say it's as close to a perfect game as you can get.

Wow. Very cool.

I couldn't stop playing it. It was truly incredible. And it makes me really hyped for other remakes right along that style of.

Like, let's yeah, let's not rethink it. Let's not just make the graphics better. Let's make it better.

Yeah. Let's not change what made the game good. Let's not try to do something new just within the framework of an old game. Let's remake the game. That way it still feels familiar, but is new and fresh and is just a better experience. And that's what this is. I love the original Resident Evil Four. I've sunk, I would say hundreds of hour. I think the only game I've played more than Resident Evil Four is World of Warcraft. I think that's probably the only game I've put more hours into.

Wow.

But I honestly don't know if I would really care to play the original. Much more interesting with the remake. That's how good the remake is.

You don't have the desire to play the original. You want to just play the remake.

Yeah, because when I went playing it for this episode, I was like, this is awesome. But I couldn't help but thinking, like, oh, I kind of want to play the remake. Which is why I told you not to play the remake.

Right?

Yeah. I told you not to play the remake. Because I think it almost I mean, it doesn't rob this game of any of its charm or any of its good qualities, but it's just so much of an improvement that this game kind of just fades into the background. Just a better version.

Wow. It's like an improvement. Yeah.

But I'm not just a slob and Capcom's knob here. Lots of people thought that this game was incredible.

Sure.

Incredible. So let's talk about the reception. Let's talk about the reviews.

Come on, let's go home.

Sounds like a great idea. Mission accomplished.

Right, Leon? Not quite. I still have to get you home. Safe.

Now on Metacritic, the GameCube version of this game has a 96.

The same.

As the PlayStation Two version. Both have a 96 out of 100. The highest rated versions of this game.

Wow.

The HD remasters for the PS Three and Xbox 360 would get an 84. The Wii version would get a 91. So it's the closest version it's got. It has basically universal acclaim.

Yeah.

Which, I mean, of course it does.

96 is fucking disgustingly. Good.

Oh, yeah. One up gave it an A edge, gave it a nine out of ten. Famitu gave the Wii version a 38 out of 40. Game spot, gave it a nine point. Gave the PS Two version a 9.3 out of ten. The GameCube version a 9.6 out of ten. Here's one thing that I really notice between the two. As someone who started playing the GameCube one and then moved on to the PlayStation Two one, I think the GameCube one looks better.

Okay, interesting.

I think visually it looks a little better. I also think the GameCube controller is better for this game than the PlayStation Two controller.

That would make sense.

The game was developed for the GameCube controller. Yeah, exactly. It just kind of works.

Right?

But obviously the PlayStation Two version is a more definitive version. It has all the stuff. It has separate ways. Game Spy would give this game five stars on both GameCube Wii and PS Two.

Wow.

IGN gave it a 9.5 on the PS Two. 9.8 on the GameCube. People fucking love this game. Yeah, I love this fucking game. We talked about it in our top PlayStation Two games. This is one of my favorite games of all time from my absolute favorite franchise of all time.

Right?

I love this game. I love the goofy story. I love Leon's One liners. Where is everyone going? Bingo.

Bingo. Yeah.

Maybe we could work some overtime. Oh, I just want to point out the point where I knew I loved this game, like, just absolutely loved this game, was when Leon runs into the throne room with Salazar and he ends up hitting a release to the floor, falls out, and Leon falls and throws a grappling hook and catches himself. And then Salazar is waiting to listen to hear him die. And Leon shoots like the sound cone. And it's like, fuck.

I know.

I was like, this is the greatest.

Yeah, that's a nice little moment in my life. Yeah.

But what do you think about it? For someone who didn't play it when.

It came out, it's a very good game. Having missed out on it. See, here's the problem. The hype for decades, literally well, a decade and a half, whatever, 18 years has been so big that it couldn't live up to what I had heard. That being said, it came really fucking close. It's a delightful game. It's so fun. It's so challenging at times, but you never feel like, I'm just going to turn this off and never play it again.

It never feels unfair.

Correct. It feels like you could have done something different. Oh, I should have done that. Or, I didn't do that quick enough. Or if I hadn't hit that shot, like, if I had started throwing fucking incendiary grenades earlier, I would have beat it. Like you said, it never feels unfair. The story is fucking bonkers. You know? I love those fucking bonkers story. All that being said, I'm going to give Resident Evil Four nine out of ten chickens running everywhere.

Nine out of ten chickens.

Nine out of ten chickens.

Well, I can see that point of view. It is weird playing it all these years later if you didn't play it when it first came out. Yeah, because the hype around it when it first came out was wild.

Yeah.

Everyone was playing this game. It was just the game everyone was talking about.

Right.

I mean, I was in 10th grade when this game came out and it blew me away.

Right.

I'm sure I didn't know a video game could be like this. I'd yet to play a game that could suck me in as quickly as this game. And it comes on so fast, there's no real building up to it. Immediately you're hooked into this world.

Absolutely.

And I think it kind of has shaped how I look at games ever since. I would say that this game is fundamental in how I view video games in general since then and 2005. That's a late PS Two release.

Oh, absolutely. It is.

It's an incredible, incredible game, which is why and it's very important to me, which is why I'm going to give it nine and a half out of ten geographically incorrect Spanish accents.

Yeah. Nine and a half. I thought about going a little higher, but I think yeah, between if I had played it, I think originally when it first came out, I think I probably would have given a nine and a half. Right now if I had replayed it.

I'm giving it a nine and a half out of ten when I give the remake a 9.75 out of ten.

Damn. We're closer to perfect. Yeah. There's no such thing.

So play this game. Please play this game. Play the remake. Play the original if you like me.

And somehow haven't played it all these years. Bite the bullet. Play the remake if you must. Play the remake, actually, because apparently it's even better. I'm probably going to get the remake at some point. But yeah, you got to play this game.

If you have somehow made it to the year of our Lord Osman Sadler 2023 and have not played either the remake or the original, I'd say play the original. Play the original. So you can see so you can have like a frame of reference for just a how much of an improvement? Because I know it doesn't seem like much, right. 9.5 to 9.75. That point 25 is impossible. How do you do that? And they manage to do it. And I think having the original as a frame of reference will show you just how impressive that jump is.

Right.

In video game culture. I think it's such a huge milestone and such a huge point in history for video games that you'd kind of be doing yourself a disservice by not checking out the original.

Check it out, please. Check it out.

Please do.

Well, that was our thoughts on Resident Evil Four. Thank you all so much for listening to both episodes of this double header. Don't forget to like us. Subscribe to us on whatever your podcast.

Whatever of choice is, and thank you for going along on this ride of sequel month. Let us know. We have a couple more themed months planned out for the rest of the year. Is this something you guys like? Let us know. Hit us up on social media. You can find us on Instagram at Discreet Error, Pod, or you can find me on Instagram, at funeral, casual games.

I'm at Ian Golding Games.

And you can also find us on whatnot? Slinging games, making shitty tearless, doing the damn thing, hanging out, just shooting the breeze. But we want your feedback, please.

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